I have taught high school Spanish for 20 years. At the beginning of each school year during in-service, I endure active shooter training, which in and of itself is traumatic.
My colleagues and I “joke” that we need counseling after the training. What else do you do when you are horrified but have to act like it’s completely normal to practice this? Despite laughing it off, it is not funny in any way and we are all keenly aware of that. We are just trying to cope with the reality that this could happen on any day at any given moment.
At the high school where I teach, police officers train us on how to best prepare for an active shooter in our school. They go through multiple scenarios. They teach us to purposefully arrange the desks and furniture in our classrooms in order to have minimum deaths if the shooter were to begin shooting through the window of the door.
The police officers remind us how quickly someone can bleed out. We learn how to apply a tourniquet, even if we don’t have a proper one. I can use a belt, a shoelace, and even the cord to the electric pencil sharpener. Sucking chest wound? No problem. I have been trained to apply a chest seal.
I know to keep a pair of scissors near the door so that if a shooter is able to enter the classroom, the person closest (which hopefully is me and not a student) can attempt to stab the shooter. This will hopefully stop him, but it will at least stall him before he starts mowing us down.
The most upsetting but also the most helpful part of this training is when the officers simulate an attack with a rapid-fire Nerf gun. We see how quickly, once we hear commotion and shooting, that we can lock and barricade the door and turn out lights and hide. We pray our classroom is not the first in a surprise attack. Unless the door is already locked, there is little you can do to stop the attack.
It is sad that instead of spending more time preparing meaningful lesson plans, decorating our classrooms, and preparing for the upcoming school year teachers have to spend this time learning and practicing how to best keep our students and ourselves alive if we were to be attacked. It is necessary, and as a mother of children in both elementary and high school, I am grateful that their teachers are trained.
However, it blows my mind that mass shooting after mass shooting, there is no change. Jonesboro and Columbine should have been enough. I was in college when both the Jonesboro and Columbine shootings occurred. I remember them both vividly. I was horrified. It was awful, sickening, and unfathomable. Yet, over the next two decades we have seen more and more school and mass shootings take place.
I remember the biggest shift in our teacher preparation and training for such an event was after Sandy Hook. It was almost as if school administration realized this was much more serious than we thought. I thought surely something would change. We can come together from both sides of the political arena to reach a consensus for the safety and well-being of our country’s children, right? No.
Since first writing this a few weeks ago, we have had another mass shooting. A joyful Independence Day parade turned into a violent ambush leaving a 2-year-old orphaned, beloved grandfathers gone, friends, husbands, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters never to see their loved ones again, all while enjoying a celebratory, community event.
When will it be enough for you to push for positive change in gun laws? When it is your loved one that is killed? But it will be too late at that point.
We all should be as distraught and outraged as the friends and family members of those who have lost their lives. Until we are, this will continue to happen. You have to care enough to push for change. Yes, you can pray about it, but do something! Remember, faith without works is dead.
So, as teachers get ready to go back to school in August and start preparing to have your children in class each day, to provide an education, to nurture their naturally inquisitive minds, to offer a safe space to express themselves and ask questions, think about what you can do to make a difference and give your child the best chance of survival if — God forbid — this were to happen at their school. I guarantee you we are not in it for the money.
Melanie W. Morton is a high school Spanish teacher originally from Memphis.
Greg Cravens